Do not Burn the candle at both the ends, was what we learnt in our schooling days. A lesson that i seemed to have forgot as i grew up. In the quest of achieving the growing needs, which sometimes, i feel is our own creation, we end up working more harder. I had lived without calculator and today i vie for each and every new gizmo that pops up on television.
So, here i was working tirelessly for almost two three years now, the morning began at around 6.30 am and the day ended at around 02.30 am in the morning. The mad rush of city life, the growing pressure at office, the social and other assignments that i took after office hours and on weekends tied me up completely for these two three years.
Alas, age was catching with even faster a pace, it gave enough indications, which i ignored quite often.
So about two week ago’s my rendezvous with my sickness began. It began with a tingling pain in the right side of abdomen. Painkillers were the first resort which i took, and it gave me instantaneous relief too. But, soon, i realized that something was going wrong inside me, my body was not supporting me, i started feeling tired and worn out. Frequent complaints of mild fever, cold etc got me to the doctor quite often, his reaction was too mild for the sickness, i suppose, everytime i would visit him, he would say, it was nothing but seasonal illness due to weather. He would give some medicines, which would cure me or atleast make me feel good. But, still, it was not the right medication, i found in the hindsight.
Last wednesday, when i got a bout of unbearable pain in the right side of the abdomen, i took a painkiller, as i had to rush to the office as some very urgent work was pending there. Come thursday, again at the same timing, the pain arosed, this time it was more unbearable, the painkiller failed and i was unable to walk or sit straight. The doctor was called and he gave some injections and asked me to get the X-rays and Sonography done on urgent basis. Somehow i went to the diagnostic center to get the tests done, i was already feeling very tired and was feeling very hard to take breath. The tests were done and the reports in my hand, medical language as it was, beyond my reach, i went haplessly to the doctor to show the report and he said that fluids had accumulated in the right lungs indicative of illness like tuberculosis or pneumonia, back here tuberculosis is looked down upon as a taboo and a person suffering from it is looked down upon. I was like, shocked, and did not knew how to react, my wife was with me and the doctor advised to get the CT Scan done. Till the time the exact diagnosis was not done the doctor could not prescribe exact medicine. The CT Scan was scheduled the next morning and i was told that before CT Scan a Blood Serum test needed to be performed as they would be injecting some medicine while performing the test, negative serum report meant that the medicine would harm my kidneys and in such a scenario CT Scan was not possible. So in the morning, on friday, i took the serum test and after two hours a call came from the clinic that the report was ok and i can undergo CT Scan. It was the first time i underwent the test and to be frank did not even knew what it was, so when i went under that circular dome shaped machine my heart was beating louder than ever. They injected something and i could sense a very cold medicine rushing through my veins to my heart and my body. The report was available in the evening indicating that there was indeed accumulation of a small quantity of fluid in my right lung. As I was not having any cough or other symptoms indicative of tuberculosis and my symptoms like uncontrollable chills of cold was more or less indicative of pneumonia, the doctor advised to get the fluid removed and tested for confirmation. He recommended a hospital to get the “tapping” procedure done.
In the 38 years of my survival on this mother earth, this was the very first occasion when i went to the hospital for my own treatment. At about 11 am in the morning, the nursing staff asked me to lie on a bed in the operation theatre, the consent form was filled in, the nurses started bringing in all kinds of needles, cotton, medicines, tubes etc, it sent shrills down my spines, i shred to even take injection and here i was going to get injected by a 20 mm needles, the needle would go deep into my lung and remove the fluid. It was all very terrible for me. Soon the Doctor arrived, it was business as usual for him, he injected an injection for local anesthesia and said the needles wont pain much. But, he was wrong, it pained and pained much. But, i had no other option, but to bear the pain, the doctor removed the fluid, said there was not much fluid in there. The dressing was done and i was asked to rest for an hour or so.
I returned back in the afternoon with my wife rested, the fluid was sent for testing. Later, it was confirmed that it was a bout of broncho-pneumonia God knows what it meant, but it made me very very sick. The weakness still prevails the medicines is making me all the more sick due to acidic nature of it.
Sometimes, illness is also good, i now feel, for the care, the attention that we get, never ever in the last decade or so of my marriage, i found my wife so caring as she was during these last fifteen days, she cared, she nursed me like a kid. Friends, who cared called, visited home, Is’nt that a silver lining afterall. But, no, i would not like to fall sick again to see this silver lining again.
Vijay's Space 